Software Development and Programming Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

[Duke Wy Lin]

To the bolded, I'd add that it's definitely possible to have both of these qualities in the same manager, which means a special kind of working hell. When your engineering manager not-so-subtly implies you should be working over the weekends and holidays to finish a project that literally can't progress further because another team needs to finish their work first, instead of enjoying that time off with your friends and family

I couldn't run from my last job fast enough in part because of this. But as much as my time there sucked, it did at least teach me a lot of red flags to look for in future companies.

What are some red flags a n00b like me should look out for?

 

[Regular Developer]

End goal is to be a blockchain developer, I know nothing atm but html, working towards becoming a full stack dev, then planning to transition to blockchain development. Am I going about it the wrong way?

I’m limited to few hrs a day due to full time work, on weekends/days off i put on 5-8hrs in.

My thinking is if you want to do blockchain work, you'd probably want to focus more on backend type of development. I don't know that much about blockchain, but it seems like its pretty algorithmic heavy. So either you'll be hardcore crypto programming, or you'll be interfacing with the blockchain api (or whatever they'd call it). I'd probably lean more into javascript than html or css if you want to get to blockchain faster, because at least with that you'll be learning basic programming concepts that translate to other languages.

What are some red flags a n00b like me should look out for?

Generally, bad managers are reactive. They don't understand the problems that you're trying to solve from a business perspective, and they don't understand that software has limitations or tradeoffs. And probably the cherry on this cake is that they act with this "I'm the boss" kind of attitude. So the red flags I've seen are a mix of those

One red flag would be when members from other teams talk about what they are unhappy with from the development team, a bad manager will echo those sentiments to you and your team members. (I guess generally, bad managers are reactive rather than proactive). When the product owner or the users have complaints, if the manager says "We'll fix that" and you don't even understand either the issues or the product the users want, thats not good.

Another one would be if you tell them of a tradeoff, that has some non technical implications (like we can store all data for all time, but its going to cost a lot of money), and he makes the decision on the spot and you know he doesn't have the final word, thats not good. And -2 points if he blames you guys in the meeting.

Another one would be the insistence on using a tool that is shytty and/or is not the tool for the job, but he brought it into the company so it makes them look good. Thats not good, lol

 

[Spatial Paradox]

What are some red flags a n00b like me should look out for?

A couple of red flags that specifically applied to my last company that I'll be on the lookout for in the future:

- Multiple employees describing the workplace as "fast paced" and/or "chaotic":
"Fast paced" makes it sound like you'll always be working on new, exciting projects. But in this particular case, there wasn't much in the way of process around projects in general, so a lot of projects seemed to be pretty poorly planned. Furthermore, because there was a relentless focus on delivering new features (hyper focused on "growth" is how my manager put it), engineers never had the time to go back and clean up code to make it more robust, easy to modify, and reliable before having to work on the next project, so systems are constantly breaking.

A lot of employees described it as "chaotic" after I joined. Some folks enjoy these kinds of workplaces, but I'd run from any place that's described in that way.

- No real typical "office hours" or "working hours":
One of the questions I asked during my interviews with them was what the typical "office hours" are. The response I got was (paraphrased) "oh, there's no real "office hours" per se. As long as you're getting your work done, no one's really cares when you work"

This might sound pretty reasonable, but then you realize after getting hired that you can easily end up on a project where some other stakeholders (e.g. upper management) have already decided on what the deadline for the project should be. So you end up working nights and weekends to make a deadline that you had no part in actually determining if it's reasonable. And it stems in part from the company culture not really respecting work-life balance.

 

[EzekelRAGE]

I left my job as a teacher, learning the basics atm while working full time in oil field job (safety, pretty relaxed).
Any tips?! How far can I get with 2-3hrs daily study sessions? 6 months to be job ready, or I’m underestimating the load?

Im basically in the same boat as you in regards to learning code and not knowing anything. I recommend the boot camp Im in. Teaching us to be a full stack dev and to get a job(How to interview, Dont just click apply). Currently doing backend stuff but first half was front end.
It's in my post 5327 here:
Software Development and Programming Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

Tips: Like Dr. Acula said, do your own projects. Nothing helps you understand better than that.
When you get done with HTML/CSS try looking at: Frontend Mentor | Challenges

They give you files and stuff and tell you to recreate the project. They also have JS stuff too.

When you get your feet wet in JS, I recommend doing codewars too: Codewars - Achieve mastery through coding practice and developer mentorship
They helped me a lot in understanding how to use filter/map/reduce/sort. Make sure you filter it out to where you only get 8yus/fundamentals stuff.
Ignore the elite ppl doing the shyt in one line and stuff. They just be trying to show off

If you do some tuts/code alongs, dont just code along mimicking what they do. Usually the person will say what they are going to do next, "Now we need to have this button send data to us and we need to use that data to run this function and send that back to the user". Pause the video. Implement that on your own(assuming it's something you've been over before), then come back to the video to see how they implemented. Doing this has helped me as well.

 

[null]

My thinking is if you want to do blockchain work, you'd probably want to focus more on backend type of development. I don't know that much about blockchain, but it seems like its pretty algorithmic heavy. So either you'll be hardcore crypto programming, or you'll be interfacing with the blockchain api (or whatever they'd call it). I'd probably lean more into javascript than html or css if you want to get to blockchain faster, because at least with that you'll be learning basic programming concepts that translate to other languages.

Javascript is the last place (language) on earth to learn good programming practice. Maybe typescript but even then there are better blockchain languages to start with. Java being one. You will probably have to learn some JS (even as a backend Dev, sadly) but JS is dominant because of business applications/browsers driving adoptiion rather than because it is a good language.

I don't know about anyone else but I wouldn't waste my time on Rust just yet. That is if your goal is a job. It's supposed to be a replacement of C++, but it doesn't have the baked in history of C++ and it won't be replacing it on a widescale yet. I would, personally, replace it with c++.

No, about C++.

If breh wants to do blockchain and he wants to learn "backend" strongly-typed, statically-linked, typesafe "traditional" programming and to maximise his ops in the job market then Java is the place to start. Not C++.

C++ is more of a curio when it comes to web-based user facing application. It will get him specific jobs but on top of that he will have to learn Java (or similar Kotlin mayve Groovy) anyway if he is heading in the blockchain direction.

Start with C++ @Top Left IFF you have time and want to understand near-metal programming concerns. It would be good for you but if you are heading in the blockchain direction Java (or similar) is going to rear its ugly head along the way, in particular when dealing with web and/or enterprise applications.

The plumbing can be and often is C++ but the User level apps are more often not.

random example: the coinmarketcap API doesn't even offer a C++ api.

Account

coinmarketcap.com

 

[null]

oof. I definitely fallback to stackoverflow for questions like this. I would imagine you'd want to copy to storage before you merged. At least in the cases of functional programming

I am interested in the discussion and opinions here. I already implemented merge-in-place (this weekl) but the code is fiddly and I have my own motivations for doing it that way. Was just surveying opinion.

 

[null]

I left my job as a teacher, learning the basics atm while working full time in oil field job (safety, pretty relaxed).
Any tips?! How far can I get with 2-3hrs daily study sessions? 6 months to be job ready, or I’m underestimating the load?

Watch the youtube videos I linked above.

They will give you information to help YOU decide or even better discuss the direction you want to go in. Especially Crash Course Computing. It's only 41 videos, each around 12 mins -> around 8 hours.



You could do that all in a couple of days. Or even by tomorrow.

 

[Top Left]

Watch the youtube videos I linked above.

They will give you information to help YOU decide or even better discuss the direction you want to go in. Especially Crash Course Computing. It's only 41 videos, each around 12 mins -> around 8 hours.



You could do that all in a couple of days. Or even by tomorrow.

Appreciate it fam
Gonna check em out as soon as I’m done my shift here

 

[null]

Appreciate it fam
Gonna check em out as soon as I’m done my shift here

Ok cool. Any questions or if you just want to discuss stuff let me/us kmow.

 

[Regular Developer]

Anybody that needs to work with mock data, just wanted to sit this down:

Mockaroo: Provides a data or an api that will return fake data that you can use for demos or POCs

Mockaroo - Random Data Generator and API Mocking Tool | JSON / CSV / SQL / Excel

A free test data generator and API mocking tool - Mockaroo lets you create custom CSV, JSON, SQL, and Excel datasets to test and demo your software.

www.mockaroo.com

Faker: Library in python that will allow you to generate various fake data

Welcome to Faker’s documentation! — Faker 13.12.0 documentation

 

[Sonny Bonds]

Does anyone know anything about Google Analytics? I have to implement it on the company website.

I don’t understand how I got roped into dealing with this. I’m not a data person. Everything I learned about it is from trial and error and a YouTube video.

I think he’s freaking out because:
- the interface is trash
- data isn’t showing up in one of the properties, but I think that’s because I just implemented it (late) last night

But real time viewer data is showing.

 

[cobra]

a certain crypto company that was hiring like crazy rescinded all their job offers
i was waiting for an decision from them too...guess that wont be good

 

[null]

Does anyone know anything about Google Analytics? I have to implement it on the company website.

I don’t understand how I got roped into dealing with this. I’m not a data person. Everything I learned about it is from trial and error and a YouTube video.

I think he’s freaking out because:
- the interface is trash
- data isn’t showing up in one of the properties, but I think that’s because I just implemented it (late) last night

But real time viewer data is showing.

I don't but ... it's in this website. Track down thecoli tech team

Blacklight – The Markup

A Real-Time Website Privacy Inspector

themarkup.org

 

[Responsible Allen Iverson]

 

[GhostfacexDOOM]

Not sure if this has been shared, but I know a lot of people in my circle have been asking me about learning SQL. I found this to be a really good reference for learning about DB Schemas, PK, FK, Joins, etc. Oracle Live SQL It's a cloud instance of Oracle 19c, so you won't have to worry about setting up the DB, just create some tables, practice some functions, Joins, etc. Now they even offer some tutorials too. It's been a huge help to friends who were from the business side that wanted moved over to a data analyst role, but weren't too technical yet. Hope it can help some folks get their feet wet in databases.